


melior est die mortis

by ndnickerson



Category: Justified
Genre: Car Sex, F/M, Future Fic, Minor Character Death, Porn Battle, Porn With Plot, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-10
Updated: 2012-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-30 21:31:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/336376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The longer he's here, the further it digs back into him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	melior est die mortis

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts: high heels, longneck, slow dance, buried, remember, whiskey, honey. Title is "Melior est die mortis die nativitatis" (Better is the day of death than the day of birth) (Ecclesiastes, 7, 1).

Raylan had thought he knew what panic felt like, tasted like: a squirt of bitter copper at the back of the throat, a tingle at the back of his eyes, a twitch in his finger. Then he had watched Winona slowly swell with his child, like some foul-mouthed Madonna who liked to ride him senseless while the fading sunlight turned her hair into a halo, and he had thought _I will never leave here alive._

He had been in the motel for fucking _months_ because this was supposed to be a temporary punishment, but the longer he's here, the further it digs back into him. He feels his accent broaden every time he crosses the line into Harlan County, feels the familiarity of Winona and how _right_ she looks in this place, and that turns the blood in his veins thick as honey, just as treacherous. Crib. _House_. Quicksand.

They left the kid with her mom and drove out together and it reminds him of Helen's funeral, and he doesn't like that either. Winona's in black and he holds her hand, gingerly, thinking that she'll see this in him, but maybe neither of them has been able to see the other as clearly as he's ever thought.

Her mother's smiles at him are brittle, but then he knocked up her baby girl and he's nursing bruises more often than he'd like and he'll never be fine-respectable-douchebag- _Gary_ , and that's three strikes more than she'll ever forgive. He just hopes the kid isn't sucking down a longneck right now, bashing around some thirty-year-old wooden letter blocks with it.

Raylan shakes his head, focusing on the coffin before him. Pitch black. It sucks in light, and it's closed, and when Raylan had found the pale gaunt body after the shootout his jaw had tightened so hard his teeth should have buckled under the strain. There had never been another death that could have been his; Arlo Givens had never been meant to die under a handed-down quilt, a widower twice over who spent his days in his cups and his nights reminiscing about having a quarter of his influence and power back.

A few times, years ago, burning cold with rage, Raylan imagined this. Threw that shitty pickup he'd paid for with coal-money into reverse and spun out on the gravel, glaring at the headstones. Imagined that pit like a long shadow at the base of his father's. Imagined that slow smug mouth never slow or smug again.

Now Raylan's grave is the only one that waits, and every time Raylan pulls he feels it, the texture of cold stone under his palm. The certainty is dug in like roots, tight around his heart, and there are no roads here, none that will lead anywhere else. They will plant him here, on his father's land, when he has no voice or warmth to protest.

He can count on one hand the number of times Winona has been out here, and she fidgets a little, her loose fingertips tracing the hem of her coat as her fingers grow faintly damp against his. He catches a heavyset woman glancing between them, glancing at his ringless finger, and his eyes go cold, colder than hers when she looks up at him.

But they can't do this anymore, can they, and he'll have to swallow this panic at the back of his throat and give in to the pull of the dust. No matter how hard he scrubs, the heavy grit of the coal trace will never leave him. He'll do what Winona wants, give their child a name and a father better than Arlo, and fight it down every morning when he wakes to see her beside him.

They had always sworn they would not come back here, would not do this. That they would _never_ come back.

It's thicker than simple blood, this terrible resignation that keeps him here.

On the way to pick up the kid they stop and he has whiskey and she orders a longneck, and he watches her, the tightness in the long column of her throat as she takes the first swallow, her hair touched with gold in the dim sunlight.

They're all gone now. His mother, Helen, Arlo. He's the only one left who remembers now.

He feeds a few quarters into the jukebox and takes her hand, and they dance in the narrow space between the pool tables and the wall, slow. The heels she wears line up their hips and they move together with the ease he feels only in bed, only in silence.

There's too much between them that he'll never be able to say, so he doesn't, just feels her breathe against the skin behind his ear and pivots slowly.

Will she be beside him, when that last spot claims him? Will his bones crumble next to hers, this woman he had known he would never see again, whose departure left him as spun and unsure as anything else in this forsaken town?

By the time they leave, hands joined, it's dark and cooler and his stomach is empty save the burn of alcohol. Back at the old empty house there's sure to be casseroles, desserts in clumsy disposable containers, the creak of the porch swing and mumbled conversation and cigarette smoke wreathing it all. Whispered platitudes honoring the memory of a man Arlo never was. It's so fucking empty, all of it, and it's not panic anymore, whatever this is. It's bleak and desperate and so furious that it can't last long, but he's in its grip now.

Winona has the keys—he's driven worse than this before, but no, not tonight—and when she reaches the car and unlocks the doors, he slides into the backseat.

She sighs out his name, then pockets the keys and slides in next to him. He doesn't remember the last time either one of them had enough sleep, doesn't remember the last time their lovemaking wasn't hasty, blurred, taken in a few stolen moments.

This corner of the dirt lot is dark, and distantly they can still hear the bass pounding through the walls, and she hitches up her skirt as their mouths crash together.

She wore thigh-highs to the funeral. She wore fucking thigh-highs to his father's funeral and he pushes the skirt up when she straddles him, and his hands cup her hips, fingertips brushing her ass. Bare skin. Thong.

He lets out a little grunt of approval, his head tipping back, hat falling down to the seat beside them as she unbuckles his belt, opens his fly.

There are no questions, just the brief brush of her gaze against his as she frees him, sliding closer.

She's on top, like always, like the pin of her thighs against his hips will keep him here when they both know where he's headed. They've just gotten better at denying it.

She sinks to him, parted lips letting out a soft sigh, as his fingers dig into her back. Narrow waist, slender legs, and incredibly slick between for him. She rises and falls slowly and he slips his hands under her shirt, pushes the cups of her bra up to bare her breasts and squeezes her nipples.

She sways and her teeth brush his neck, as she mumbles his name into his skin. She is part of it, this night. Everything he had ever thought he had wanted.

Want is a pale word for this.

He grasps her hips and angles a little under her, and she tilts her head back so her neck is bared and grinds against him frantically, and she freezes when he squirms his fingers under her damn underwear and finds her clit.

And then she's riding him hard as she can, her sex hot and tight against his, and he tilts his own head back, watching her from beneath his lashes as she pants, groans, her hair in a tumble down her back, her nipples points under her shirt.

He comes and for a moment, thank God, he's blank, panting his breath back, her hips flush and snug against his. Slowly she tilts her chin down and she smiles but he can't, not yet.

It fades but she puts her palm against his cheek.

_I'm sorry._

He shrugs and looks away, then back at her, thinking of all they wanted. All he had thought she wanted. How it'll be when she puts another man in the ground, some day when he isn't so lucky or so quick. Or maybe he'll live long enough to take the kid out back, to shoot empty beer cans off logs, to wake up with his joints complaining and his bones cold to drag himself out to a deer stand. And maybe she'll hand him a thermos of coffee before he goes, ruffle the kid's hair, her eyes having lost that wary, trapped look they've had for so long.

He's always hated that cold slab of stone waiting for him, like a promise. _No matter what, we will have you._

But maybe it won't be so bad. Maybe.


End file.
